By John on February 3, 2012 |
[Image: xkcd #936, on password strength. Click image to enlarge; see xkcd itself for the full six panels and the punchline.] From whiskey river: This accidental meeting of possibilities calls itself I. I ask: what am I doing here? And, at once, this I becomes unreal. (Dag Hammarskjöld [source]) …and: Ch’ui the draftsman Could draw more [...]
Posted in Comics, Humor, Language, Movies, Music, Poetry, Ruminations, The Online World, Theater, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Chuang Tzu, Dag Hammarskjöld, Duncan J. Watts, Ellen Steinbaum, Internet memes, Stephen Sondheim, Tim Johnson, xkcd |
By John on January 27, 2012 |
[Image: display window of "mini-prints" taken with the Fujifilm Instax camera (originally from the Photojojo store). See note at bottom of post for more.] From whiskey river: You know what I believe? I remember in college I was taking this math class, this really great math class taught by this tiny old woman. She was [...]
Posted in Art & Photography, Humor, Movies, Poetry, Ruminations, Television, Theater, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Anne Stevenson, dead parrot sketch, Instax, John Cleese, John Green, Mary Oliver, Monty Python, Pearl S. Buck |
By John on January 25, 2012 |
Loreena McKennitt seems to love anything which hitches the adjective Celtic to the noun music. She’s traveled the world to record music both Celtic and Celtic-like, often (even on brand-new songs) using instruments which might have been recognized 2,000 years ago across the whole range of the Celts’ distribution. She’s certainly traveled farther afield than many [...]
Posted in Midweek Music Break, Music, Poetry | Tagged Coen Brothers, Down by the Salley Gardens, Down in the Willow Garden, Holly Hunter, Loreena McKennitt, Raising Arizona, William Butler Yeats |
By John on January 20, 2012 |
From whiskey river: In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is [...]
Posted in Poetry, Ruminations, Science & Medicine, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Albert Goldbarth, Dag Hammarskjöld, James Applewhite, Richard Jones, Stéphane Mallarmé, Terry Pratchett, Wislawa Szymborska |
By John on January 13, 2012 |
[Image: a Menger sponge overgrown with vines, found here. Wikipedia explains how to construct a real Menger sponge, noting -- without elaboration -- that the resulting object "simultaneously exhibits an infinite surface area and encloses zero volume."*] From whiskey river: You know when you see something like a marvelous mountain against the blue sky, the [...]
Posted in Art & Photography, Music, Poetry, Ruminations, Science & Medicine, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Albert Goldbarth, Eamon Grennan, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ken Kesey, Menger sponge, Nat Baldwin |
By John on January 6, 2012 |
[Image: unretouched photograph of an anamorphically-painted building interior, by French artist George Rousse; I found it here. As suggested at that site, be sure to see the video about Rousse's "Durham (NC) project." And while you're at it, check out the similar but sometimes entire city-sized work of Swiss artist Felice Varini. I couldn't decide which artist's work to [...]
Posted in Music, Poetry, Politics, Ruminations, Science & Medicine, Television, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Arthur Stanley Eddington, Denise Levertov, Felice Varini, George Rousse, Groucho Marx, Naomi Shihab Nye, Noam Chomsky, Saturday Night Live, Stephen Dunn, Twin Peaks, William Stafford |
By John on December 23, 2011 |
[Image found accompanying the "Christmas Snow" (December 25, 2010) post at John Bedell's bensozia blog] From whiskey river: Snow Walking through a field with my little brother Seth I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow. For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels had been shot [...]
Posted in Humor, Movies, Poetry, Ruminations, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Anne Enright, Dave Barry, David Berman, Gary Johnson, Gary Snyder, John Bedell, Monty Python |
By John on December 16, 2011 |
[Image: "Extrange shoes," by user pepel at stock.xchng] From whiskey river: They miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind, “Who are you really, wanderer?” and the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is: “Maybe I’m a king.” (William Stafford) …and: The people in [...]
Posted in Movies, Music, Poetry, Ruminations, Style and Craft, whiskey river Fridays, Writing | Tagged All That Jazz, Bob Fosse, Gustave Flaubert, Mary Cornish, Peter Allen, Robert Frost, Tony Hoagland, Wallace Stevens, William Stafford |
By John on December 9, 2011 |
[Image: night view of House Attack, a 2006 installation by artist Erwin Wurm -- a real house, turned upside down and embedded in the roof at Vienna's Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK). See the daytime look here.] From whiskey river (which, I think, offered an especially rich selection this week): Everything That Acts Is Actual From the [...]
Posted in Art & Photography, Music, Poetry, Ruminations, whiskey river Fridays, Writing | Tagged celesta, Denise Levertov, Don DeLillo, Eamon Grennan, Erwin Wurm, J.B. Priestley, John Tarrant, Julie Kane, Norman Fischer, Tchaikovsky, the all in the moment, The Nutcracker |
By John on December 2, 2011 |
[Image: "Butterfly Splash," by Alex Koloskov. For more information, including an "e-videobook" tutorial on creating this sort of effect, see the photographer's site, which is where I found it.] From whiskey river (italicized portion): Poem Holding Its Heart In One Fist Each pebble in this world keeps its own counsel. Certain words — these, for [...]
Posted in Art & Photography, Language, Music, Poetry, Ruminations, whiskey river Fridays, Writing | Tagged Alan Watts, Alex Koloskov, Carol Ann Duffy, Jacqueline Berger, James A.H. Murray, James Salter, Jane Hirshfield, Muddy Waters |
